Good food often becomes a scarcity in our house by the end of the month. This is because I have not yet found the rhythm of Honduran cooking and grocery purchasing. I use a disproportionate amount of our grocery budget on American products, which are much more expensive, but they are all I know. This is another thing I hope to learn in the Miller: how to cook and grocery-shop like a Hondureña.
In the meantime, I start rationing fruit and snacks (which tend to get gobbled up most quickly) as we near pay day. One luxury that we sometimes have in our home is pop tarts. They are much more expensive in Honduras and can only be purchased at a fancy grocery store which carries American products. We have discovered an especially delicious variety of pop tarts called “cookie dough” that remind me of fresh chocolate-chip cookies when they pop out of the toaster.
One day I came home to find the box of cookie dough pop tarts empty. Rey said he had not eaten one, nor had I. I know Elijah wasn’t the culprit because they were up too high and he isn’t allowed to have sweets anyway. That left one person: the nanny!Now, what would you do in my situation? Naturally I couldn’t ask her about them. What would I say? “Did you eat all of our pop tarts?” “Please don’t, they are just for us!” How bad does that sound, even if I am secretly thinking it? So I hid them, behind the towels in the linen closet.
Today I am feeling guilty. The guys from AFE came over to hang out today, as they do many Saturdays, and one young man bought all of us lunch! I imagine that cost him his spending money for at least the whole month! How can children who have nothing be so generous, and I, who have so much, be so greedy?
I am still wrestling with what to do with the pop tarts. The Bible’s prescription for greed is to give away more than is comfortable (Matt 19:21-26 ). I think God might be asking me to give my beloved pop tarts away.
2 comments:
Leave Digna a note inside the pop tarts box next time saying "Dear Digna, do not eat these, they are poisonous." just kidding.
I SOOO Can relate to this post! These did not exist in Europe and I had my whole cupboard of "Imported" goodies. The worst, I hid them from the kids because I knew they found local stuff to eat just as pleasurable. Then it got worse, everytime the kids would play with crayons, I would be like... BECAREFUL don't break those, those are imported items. Worst of all was my American Mattress. I was up late at night figuring out how I would replace the mattress or find one as comfortable as my "imported item."
I SOOO CAN RELATE! I had stashes of peanut butter cookies, or American popcorn or the Gummi vitamins from Costco! Good luck :-)
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